


Catalyst

by MapleMooseMuffin



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Anxiety, Crybaby Felix Hugo Fraldarius, During Timeskip (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Fire Emblem: Three Houses Blue Lions Route Spoilers, Gen, Glenn and Dimitri are both mentioned because how could they not be, Kind of a character study, Podfic Available, but mostly the focus is on these three and their mutual rebellion against their parents, no beta we die like Glenn, or a friendship study?, running away from home to join the war, see author's notes - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-19
Updated: 2020-04-19
Packaged: 2021-03-01 18:53:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23731909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MapleMooseMuffin/pseuds/MapleMooseMuffin
Summary: Felix, Ingrid, and Sylvain reunite and decide their place in the war.By then, word has gotten in of their arrival, and Sylvain steps out in his thickest furs with both excitement and concern written on his face.“What are you two doing here?” he asks and steps forward, spreading his arms to get a hand on each of them.“Getting away from my father,” they answer in unison. The three exchange a few looks, surprise on all their faces, until Sylvain laughs and Ingrid and Felix can’t help but follow suit.“You two are disasters,” he says, as if he isn’t the worst of them. “C’mon, let’s get you in front of a fire. And stable that mount,” he adds to an attendant, who is quick to follow through. Ingrid still ducks his arm to offer her steed a few soothing pats and praise for a job well done.
Relationships: Felix Hugo Fraldarius & Ingrid Brandl Galatea & Sylvain Jose Gautier, but you'd have to squint pretty hard - Relationship, could be the start of romance if you squint
Comments: 4
Kudos: 38





	Catalyst

**Author's Note:**

> [[AUDIO VERSION] ](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1oR8He4rrZpUtG3h_STAdyhSTRQ7eLkmP/view?usp=sharing)
> 
> Hi friends!
> 
> Whoo, it's been a hot minute. I was working two jobs, and now one, and the world has gone into chaos but I'm Essential so I'm still busy. It feels good to be writing again though. 
> 
> This was originally going to be for Felix's birthday week, before time slipped away from me. The prompts were hair, loyalty/betrayal, and fairy tales, the last of which I did not meet. Mostly it turned into a little exploration of the trio's dynamic and Felix's mindset, as well as the anxiety of the war.
> 
> Yet another one of my pseudo-domestic subtle pieces. I hope you'll enjoy.~

Felix makes it two months after Dimitri’s execution before he storms out of Fraldarius Manor and marches his way north to Gautier. It’s cold. It’s always cold in northern Faerghus, to be fair, and Gautier especially so, but this year has been one of the worst for snow and ice, and Felix left his manor in a flutter of a half cloak with nothing but his seething rage at his father to keep him warm.

It would serve Rodrigue right, for Felix to freeze to death in the blizzard that accosts him halfway through the Itha Plains while his father is off hunting ghosts along the countryside. But Felix refuses to die for anyone, whether they deserve it or not. He marches through as much of the storm as he can manage, drawing on the survival tactics taught to him in school as well as the things he learned as a boy for hunting excursions gone wrong.

He’s confident in his ability to keep himself alive until he makes it to Gautier Manor, but it’s still a relief to hear the heavy beat of wings above him and a distant whiney over the howl of the storm. He pauses, pulling his cloak closer to fend against the wind with one hand and settling his other on the hilt of his sword, just in case. There is a _war_ on, after all.

The density of the storm makes it hard to spot the pegasus making her way down until she’s nearly landed, but the soft greens and teals of House Galatea stand out against the whirling white as the rider comes into view. Her long hair is pulled tight in a braid behind her, but the way she’s grown out her bangs catches his attention for a moment. It looks a little more like the way she wore it when they were children, scrambling up trees around the manor and fighting over who Glenn loved more.

For a moment, Felix wonders if his father isn’t the only one seeing ghosts.

His own hair is a matted mess by now, too long and heavy to stay in its bun against the onslaught of wind and ice. He tosses his head to knock the mess away from his eyes and the lingering tendrils of nostalgia from his mind. Ingrid offers out a hand to him.

“We saw you through the storm,” she yells out against the howling. “Figured you might want a ride.”

“How do you know where I’m going?” he challenges, but he’s already stepping forward, releasing his sword to reach out and take her hand instead.

“Well I doubt you’re marching to Sreng or Fhirdiad. I think we both had the same idea.”

She helps him up onto her steed and shows him where to put his hands. Felix has never been much of a fan of horses, to be honest. They may be fast, but they limit his reflexes and mobility on the battlefield, and having another living creature under him and endangered by his every move just doesn’t sit right in his chest. If it weren’t for this storm, he’d likely decline her offer, but she’s right in that it’s more practical for them to go together, if they’re both heading to Sylvain’s manor. The blizzard can only get worse the further north they press.

Felix holds tight to Ingrid and tries not to be unsettled by the rushing beat of her pegasus’s wings or the _speed_ at which the ground sinks away below them. The swirl of the storm is almost blinding this high, and the wind even louder. It’s colder, too, even with the added warmth of her body against his. How she managed to spot him through this chaos, or even navigates it, is beyond him.

A few more hours of wordless travel carry them to Gautier Manor, just in time for nightfall. By the time they land, Felix can hardly feel most of his body, numb from the ice and wind. He’s stiff as he slides off the pegasus, and Ingrid is too, practically having to pry her fingers from around the reigns.

“Stomp out your legs,” she advises him, doing so herself. They stand there in the courtyard for a few minutes, stomping like aggravated mules until some semblance of feeling returns to them. By then, word has gotten in of their arrival, and Sylvain steps out in his thickest furs with both excitement and concern written on his face.

“What are you two doing here?” he asks and steps forward, spreading his arms to get a hand on each of them.

“Getting away from my father,” they answer in unison. The three exchange a few looks, surprise on all their faces, until Sylvain laughs and Ingrid and Felix can’t help but follow suit.

“You two are disasters,” he says, as if he isn’t the worst of them. “C’mon, let’s get you in front of a fire. And stable that mount,” he adds to an attendant, who is quick to follow through. Ingrid still ducks his arm to offer her steed a few soothing pats and praise for a job well done.

‘A fire’ turns out to be the roaring fireplace in Sylvain’s personal quarters, which suits them all just fine as it is late and no one is in the mood to talk with the Margrave. It is at risk of being seen as a slight, that they sequestered themselves off without greeting the master of the house, but Sylvain has his ways with the staff, and he manages to convince them all that Felix and Ingrid are in too grave a state to be presentable to his father.

“I will inform him myself,” he swears, and then leads his friends off to his rooms without a word to his father.

Felix isn’t interested in getting involved in that fight, so he doesn’t. Ingrid he’d expect to put up a token protest, but she just settles down, ass on the rug in front of the fire like she was raised a mercenary, not a nobleman’s only daughter. Felix snorts down at her from where he stands warming his hands in front of the flames.

Sylvain drags two bare coat racks over and settles one next to each of them.

“It’d be a shame for you two to make the trek all the way up here just to freeze to death in my sitting room. C’mon, get out of those wet clothes. You can borrow some of mine for the night.”

“Thank you,” Ingrid says, offering him a smile over her shoulder. Then she sets to work unstrapping her armor and freeing herself from her boots.

Felix brings half numb fingers to work over the fastening of his cloak with a small grunt of acknowledgement. He’s just hanging it up when Sylvain bustles back in with two folded piles of clothing.

“So really, why are you two here?” he asks and settles their piles beside them. When he straightens it’s with a smile – the one he uses to cover anxiety.

Felix realizes then that the last time Sylvain heard news of old friends, it was likely the same royal messenger that brought Felix word of the Prince’s death.

He opens his mouth, but can’t find anything reassuring to say. “I told you why,” is all he manages.

Sylvain cocks a brow, eyes and smile still anxious though his voice is playful. “Right. Getting away from your father. You want me to believe you two traveled across two territories in a winter blizzard just to get some air?”

Felix looks at Ingrid. Ingrid looks at Sylvain.

There’s a lot to read into the fact that its they who have come to him, when he is the one who avoids his inheritance like a plague.

“We didn’t plan this,” Felix tells him. It earns another raised eyebrow. Sylvain looks down at Ingrid and opens his mouth to say something, already gesturing at Felix, but Ingrid beats him to it.

“I’m joining the war.”

Sylvain’s hand falls.

“Oh,” Felix says.

“ _Oh_ ,” Sylvain breathes.

Ingrid watches them both steadily from the floor. Her hands toy with the fastenings of her tunic, slowly working it open. The fiddling is her only sign of nervousness in the heavy quiet that rolls in like morning mist between them.

It shouldn’t be surprising. It _isn’t_ surprising. Ingrid has dreamed of being a knight since they were toddlers, since before she’d even ridden her first horse. She’s trained beside them their entire lives and Felix has had no delusion that she would sit quietly when there were people to protect. When her friends were in danger.

Ingrid fighting for Faerghus is no surprise. But Ingrid deciding to forsake her duty, to disregard her father’s wishes? Felix can see it on Sylvain’s face, a reflection of his own feelings. Surprise, admiration, and not a small bit of jealousy.

Ingrid has done what neither of them have found the strength to do just yet.

“You can’t convince me to back down,” Ingrid says when the silence stretches too long. Her tunic is fully open now, her undershirt nearly soaked through. Felix does her the courtesy of staring at Sylvain instead, and Sylvain, oddly enough, is blushing with his eyes on the fire.

“Why would I tell you to turn back?” Felix asks. It’s her decision to make, and it’s the right one. He can’t imagine Ingrid settling down to be a dutiful wife with a faceless nobleman in need of heirs. In truth he can’t picture anyone in this room settling down to their duties.

There’s a rustle of fabric as Ingrid pulls on one of Sylvain’s borrowed shirts.

Sylvain says to the fire, “It’s not that I think you shouldn’t fight. I just wasn’t expecting you to say that. I thought House Galatea was taking a neutral stance, like its sister Daphnel.”

Ingrid sighs. “They are.” Sylvain and Felix both turn to her in surprise.

“You’re running away!” The words tumble sharp from Felix’s mouth, a barking accusation born of sheer surprise. Of the three of them, Ingrid has always held her family closest to her heart. To break out for a week and visit old friends is one thing, but even Felix knew somewhere in the back of his mind that he’d eventually march back to Fraldarius, bitter but encumbered by his responsibilities as heir.

To take up arms in direct contrast to her house’s stance… It isn’t just shirking a noble duty. It’s mutiny.

“You’ll be disinherited,” Sylvain nearly wheezes.

Ingrid frowns at him and sets to work rolling up the too long sleeves of her borrowed shirt. “I don’t believe it will come to something as drastic as that, Sylvain.” But in the flickering shadows cast by the fire, Felix recognizes the wariness that hovers heavy in her gaze.

A gaze that hardens and rounds on Felix a moment after. “And this isn’t running away. I’m doing what’s right. That has always been my duty.” _As a knight_ hovers, unsaid, in the air alongside the cracking of the fire. It doesn’t need to be said – all three of them hear it as clear as a bell, but the words aren’t Ingrid’s alone.

Felix clenches his teeth and his sword hand against the familiar choking sensation that plagues him whenever Glenn comes to mind. He’s scowling, pushing his inner struggle outward, and Ingrid takes it to be charged at her and scowls back.

That makes him angry. Gets him thinking. Half dressed in Sylvain’s borrowed clothing, Ingrid spouts off these idealisms and romanticized philosophies on what it means to have a purpose and a calling, all while ignoring the one given to her at birth. She picks and chooses what duties she has and then acts like they’re inescapable, like it’s her fate to be a knight and not something she decided for herself.

She’s always been like this. Lecturing others for ignoring their prescribed duties and assigning her own as she pleases. It’s always torn at him like wrenching brambles from his throat because there’s no reasoning with her, no words that can make her see the hypocrisy. Not from Felix, who can only find barbed words and the vulnerable places to stab them into. Nor from Sylvain, who can only spew petal after petal of flowery yet artificial prose and gnaw on crest-shaped thorns until his gums bleed raw.

Glenn was the only person Ingrid ever listened to, and she heard all the wrong things.

“Just make sure you’re doing it for the right reason,” Felix grits through his teeth. “If you want to fight, then fight. But don’t bind the lance to your hand and your legs to the saddle just because men are dying.”

She hears his words, but not his meaning. Her eyes burn hotter than the fire beside them, sharper than the best blade on his belt.

“I am doing this because it’s what’s right. Is there any reason more justified than defending our _home_ , our _families_ , our _kingdom_? What other reason could I have, Felix?” She stands, coming to eye level with his nose and still finding a way to be intimidating as she presses on. Felix finds himself subconsciously drifting a leg back into a defensive sword stance. “If you think I’m out here for _glory_ , or to prove my father wrong out of spite, then you have confused me for a mirror.”

“You grew out your hair.”

They both turn, glares broken by Sylvain’s sudden and surprised interjection. Ingrid shifts beside Felix, tucking into herself and raising an unsure hand to pinch at her fringe. Her brow furrows, anger draining from her eyes to make room for concern. Self-consciousness.

“Is it uneven?” she asks after a pause.

Sylvain blinks and pulls back, looking like he’s snapped himself out of a daze. Felix’s scowl shifts from anger to confusion and impatience. Why interrupt a serious argument over something so trivial? Unless Sylvain is also having flashes of a younger Ingrid tousling about in the flowerbeds of Fraldarius Manor with Felix and Dimitri.

Best to bury those memories, alongside the men who own them.

“N-no, nothing like that.” Sylvain waves his hands in front of himself, taking a step back like Ingrid will hit him. It’s probably a reflex at this point, given how many times he’s earned himself a good thwack upside the head before. “I just thought you looked… different. And then I realized what it was.”

“It was getting in my face too much while flying,” Ingrid says. “It’s not a risk I can afford to take on a real battlefield.”

“What about the rest of it?” Felix gestures to her twisted braid, damp now that the fire has melted the splinters of ice that nestled there during their flight.

“I could say worse about yours,” Ingrid returns. Felix brushes a hand through the half thawed, matted tangle of dark fringe falling in his face.

“You may have a point,” he concedes.

“So what, did you two come all this way to play dress up and give each other makeovers in my sitting room?” Sylvain laughs. Felix gives him a sharp look in the hopes it’ll stop him before he babbles something ridiculous, but they both know that never works on Sylvain. He thrives on the scorn.

“I have a dagger here,” Ingrid offers. She stoops and draws one out of her boot. Felix has to commend her for the foresight. Never know when you’ll be up too close and without a sword, after all.

“What? Come on, at least use a pair of scissors,” Sylvain protests.

Felix can’t pass up the chance to ruffle him now. He curls his lip, tucking the smallest of smirks into the corner of his mouth, and draws back the edge of his coat to show his own spare dagger resting in a holster strapped to his thigh.

“I’ll cut yours if you cut mine.”

“Sure. Crop it close for me. Who knows how long this war will last.”

Ingrid presses her dagger into his palm and drags a wooden chair across the room, deaf to Sylvain’s protests, then seats herself in front of the fire. She tugs off her wet stockings and holds out damp feet to rest against the hearth, sighing and leaning back with eyes closed.

Felix snorts and tosses his gloves to the couch, where Sylvain is quick to pick them back up and mutter something about tidiness and barns.

“You’d think you two were mercenaries.”

Felix takes up Ingrid’s braid and holds her dagger to it. He shifts the hair this way and that, wondering what’s the best way to go through with it. If it were his own he’d just saw through, but it does leave more of a choppy cut that way. Would Ingrid mind? Does he care?

Sylvain must be watching, because next thing he knows the older sighs behind him. “If you two are seriously going to do this, I’m going to make myself a cup of tea before I straighten out the messy aftermath for you. You want any Ingrid?”

“Chamomile, if you have it. Thank you, Sylvain.”

“Of course, my lady.” Felix doesn’t have to see him to know he winks. “Almyran Pine for you, Felix?”

Felix hums lowly in response and Sylvain takes it for what it is. There’s the soft creak of a china cabinet, little clinks of cups being set onto the low table between the armchairs and sofas. Then the door to Sylvain’s chambers opens and Sylvain bids them farewell for a moment to fetch a servant who will in turn fetch them some water for the kettle.

“He should just scoop up the snow,” Felix mumbles after the door clicks shut.

“You don’t have to be delicate with me,” Ingrid says.

Felix frowns at the back of her head. Then he pulls her braid taut and carves through it like dressing a fresh kill after a hunt.

When Ingrid’s blade finally rips through the other end, the braid hangs limp and heavy in his off hand like a dead thing. Or an amputation.

The sound it makes when it hits the wood floor is soft and heavy.

“Finished?” Ingrid peeks an eye open. Felix turns her blade in his hand and holds it out hilt first.

“Can’t take it back now.”

She takes the dagger. Lowers her feet from the hearth and stands. He steps over her limp braid to take a seat and lifts his hair over the back of the chair for her to cut through in turn.

Later, they sit around the low table in Sylvain’s sitting room, half finished cups of tea making a little triangle across the sleek wooden surface. Ingrid sits straight up in perfect riding posture, hands folded neatly in her lap while Sylvain works some sort of witchcraft to draw up the uneven strands Felix missed in his sweep with the blade. So far the worst of it is neatly tucked away in a pretty curving braid tracing the left side of her head.

“How is it you can split a training dummy clean in half, but you made such a mess of this?” Sylvain laughs as he weaves the fallout on Ingrid’s right into a matching braid.

“If I’d used a sword, it’d be a cleaner cut.” Felix crosses his arms and leans back into the soft pillow of Sylvain’s sofa. It, like most things in Gautier Manor, is a deep maroon with a rich green embroidery. Gaudy as all hell.

“Oh yeah. No need to worry about a full head of hair if we just let Felix decapitate you.”

“I’d be more afraid if it were you with the blade in hand,” Ingrid tells Sylvain. Felix snorts. Sylvain gives an exaggerated squawk of offense.

“I could _never_ harm a single hair on your pretty head.”

“Then you’d give a shit haircut,” Felix cuts in.

Ingrid laughs, full bellied and snorting, like she used to. She tosses her head back and then her body, slumping into Sylvain’s chest and clutching her stomach, absolute glee shuddering out of her lungs. Sylvain stares down, baffled, and the scene is enough to get Felix chortling as well.

“It wasn’t even that funny,” Sylvain says, exasperated. There are wisps of laughter on his breath now too. In two heartbeats they all devolve into raucous, joyful chaos.

It really isn’t that funny. Just the usual banter between old friends, and not even the sharpest or wittiest they’ve ever had. But like a warm hearth after hours of flight through a blizzard, the familiar ring of bickering, in earnest and in jest, after being kept so far apart by this war is an immeasurable relief. Ingrid bellows and Sylvain snickers and Felix barks laughter until they’re all red in the face and lost in the throws of it, spun out of control. Unable to stop.

With that dam broken, it’s only a small surprise that Felix starts bawling in the middle of Sylvain’s quarters. Hiccupping for breath and gasping out barks of laughter alongside sharp sobs. All of the stress and the tension that’s built up in his shoulders, his jaw, his chest come pouring out in the warmth of the fire and the company of his oldest friends, spilling up through his lungs and his eyes with a force that racks his whole body.

Sylvain’s laughter turns yelping in a way, sharp glee spun into surprise but still trembling. Felix doubles over, eyes squeezed shut, and laughs and sobs and feels the warmth of Sylvain and Ingrid’s arms as they stumble through the uproar and drape themselves around him.

“We’re a mess,” Sylvain presses through his giggles. Felix scrubs at his face, but once he’s started crying there’s no stopping it until he runs dry. They know this; he’s always been this way, ever since he was a child.

He feels like a child now. Wrapped up in the safety of his friends’ arms and letting himself be raw for just a moment. For once, it isn’t a bad thing.

When the tears dry up and the laughter fades, their arms stay. Even as Ingrid drifts off, drooling onto Felix’s shoulder and Sylvain’s borrowed shirt, she stays. Sylvain smiles beside him and tugs down a throw blanket too small to share, draping it pathetically around them as if it could do any good against the cold gnawing at the windows. He stays, too. Felix rubs one hand up and down Ingrid’s arm, another against his tired and puffy eyes, and lets himself stay as well.

They’re all rumpled disasters by the morning. Sleep lines on their cheeks, hair on the floor, half finished cups of tea gone ice cold on the low table and clothes wrinkled like paupers. Felix drags his hair up for a bun and finds it stops short. Barely long enough to be caught in a ponytail.

It’s the shortest it’s been in years. There’s something decisive about that.

“I’m joining the war too,” he says.

“Hasn’t Fraldarius already?” Sylvain starts.

“We hold our border. But I’m going out to the front. To the offensive lines. Pushing the Empire back, not just holding them at bay.”

“You’re running away,” Sylvain says. He’s echoing Felix on purpose, eyeing him with this heavy look that’s far too clever for the idiot he loves to play.

Running away; abandoning the plans that were drafted for him and taking matters into his own hands. To acknowledge that would be admitting he’s been living by his father’s terms, even now.

“He’s doing his duty,” Ingrid says, predictable and infuriating.

“Fuck duty. My father ran first – off to scour the countryside forests on a boar hunt. I’m sick of waiting at home and holding down the fort. We need a plan of _attack_ , and if no one else is going to do it then I will.”

Sylvain looks between the two of them and sighs. He raises and arm, rubs at the back of his neck and scuffs a foot against the ground.

“Guess I’m coming too. Not like I can just let you two go off without my guidance, after all.”

Ingrid snorts. “You’d have to train a bit harder before you could call yourself a mentor, Sylvain.”

“More likely we’ll be keeping you alive out there,” Felix agrees.

Sylvain sulks. “You come into _my_ house, borrow _my_ clothes, announce your grand plans to elope with a battlefield, and then you insult me? I’m starting to wonder if you’re really my friends after all.”

“Of course we’re your friends,” Ingrid says with a stretch and a smile.

“We wouldn’t bother wasting our time insulting you if we weren’t,” Felix finishes.

The sunlight reflects harsh and bright off the banks of snow when they set out, Felix on the back of Sylvain’s chestnut mare and Ingrid stretching her pegasus’s wings above them. Felix tilts his head back to watch her sweep directly overhead and then take the lead, flitting in and out of the low hanging clouds left over from the night’s storm. For now the weather is clear, the ground thickly packed with the usual Faerghus snow, and everything the war has left him lays out before him now.

All through their trek south to the front lines, Felix makes sure to keep them both in his sights.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on twitter [@maplmoosemuffin](https://twitter.com/maplmoosemuffin). Always happy to chat about the lion babies.
> 
> Thanks for reading!


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